As strange as it sounds, scientists and businessmen alike have been
trying to harvest the incredibly strong webbing of spiders for years.
What most people donít know is that spider webs are made out of an
extremely durable silk, so durable in fact that it can be stronger than
kevlar! Who wouldnít want naturally produced, protective clothing made
of that?

Spiders, however, have the nasty predisposition of being loner types
and could actually kill each other if several are housed togetherÖ Read
on for more information!

As housing a colony of these industrious insects is impossible, a brilliant team came up with the idea of imprinting the genes
with spider silk properties into other animals for simpler harvesting.
Initial research into bacteria and plantlife didnít work out so well,
but it seems silk worms are the trick.

By implanting very specific genes into the silk worms, it has become
possible to harvest a silk with up to eighty percent the strength of the
silk produced by spiders. They even tagged them with other genes to
make their eyes glow red, so scientists could tell the mutant silk worms
from the ones in whom the gene sequencing didnít take.

The applications are astounding for this sort of thing. In time this
silk could be used to produce incredibly strong rope, clothing,
protective uniforms, even new forms of bandage or bedding.

Whatever anybody has to say about genetic engineering, this is pretty cool.